For our Fifteenth Season, in 2020, we’re trying something different.
We’re going to let you guide our conversation.
Rather than waiting to ask your questions, ask them now and we’ll use those questions to structure the season in 2020.
Use this form to tell us what you’ve been struggling with, or what you wish we would talk about. Ask us about things that you are curious about. Hit us with the thorny theoretical question that you keep chewing around in your head.
Your Hosts: Howard, Mary Robinette, Dan, and Dongwon
Authors have brands whether they want to have them or not. It’s a simple principle of marketing, and the better we understand that principle, the better able we are to control how it affects our careers.
In this episode we talk marketing, and freely use terms like “relationship marketing,” “authentic experience,” and “brand loyalty,” despite the fact that sometimes these words make our inner artists cringe.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Bert Grimm, and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:21 — 16.1MB)
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Identify your brand. Think about the core aspects of your personality which you’re comfortable sharing publicly. Pick at least three things, and document them.
Be aware that “Murder Hat” is taken.
Empress of Forever, by Max Gladstone
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard
How do you write a setting in which the status quo is one with which you deeply disagree? How do you create a conflict of this sort without being overtly pedantic or preachy? In this episode we talk about creating engaging worlds while worldbuilding around—and yes, over—landmines.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:36 — 14.2MB)
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Take a wish-fulfillment character, and place them on the lowest rung of the power structure.
The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard
Let’s talk about worldbuilding with gender roles. Most of us have grown up with a very strongly defined binary, that distinction need not be how we craft the worlds in which we set our stories. In this episode we discuss the resources we have to help us, and the approaches we’ve taken to worldbuild with gender in our own work. We drill down pretty deeply on some worldbuilding with Brandon, and yes, we run quite long.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Liner Notes
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:23 — 23.0MB)
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Apply the axes of power deliberately to character gender, and determine how gender and gender identity affects the various axes
Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab
In this episode we talk about how to put characters in conflict with their setting, and how to structure our work so that these conflicts arise organically rather than feeling mandated by plot.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and master by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:17 — 13.3MB)
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Make an entire planet of you. Now create a trading post where people who are NOT you must find ways to interact with the world of yous.
Mission Mumbai: A Novel of Sacred Cows, Snakes, and Stolen Toilets, by Mahtab Narsimhan
Your Hosts: Piper, Dongwon, Amal, and Maurice
We like food, and we like to talk about food. Our hosts this week talk about how this influences their fiction, (not to mention how incredibly complex [and interesting, and delicious] the subject is.)
Credits: this episode was recorded by Howard Tayler, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:22 — 17.5MB)
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Imagine a fictional meal. Describe its history and provenance. Work that into the story.
A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook, by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sarian Lehrer, with an introduction by George R. R. Martin
Your Hosts: Brandon, Mary Robinette, Margaret, and Howard
So, you’re going to go someplace and learn something you can’t learn in any other way. Maybe it’s location research for setting. Maybe you’re off to interview an expert. Whatever you’re planning, you need to be planning it well. In this episode we discuss the field research we’ve done, how we went about it, and how we might do it differently.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson
EPISODE ORDER NOTE: As of this writing, episode 14.28’s web-sized audio file isn’t ready. We’ll run it next week, and eventually swap the dates to get 14.29 and 14.28 in the right order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:11 — 13.3MB)
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Take photos of a place that’s new to you. Write descriptions from those photos.
PBS Spacetime, by Gabe Perez-Giz and Matthew O’Dowd
(Here’s Howard’s PBS Spacetime Chronological playlist, which is current through June of 2018)
Your Hosts: Brandon, Dan, Howard, and Mahtab
How do you write about warfare in your stories when you’ve never fought in a war? How do you describe brilliant tactics when you’re completely untrained in military movements? How can you portray the emotions of someone on a battlefield without having been on a battlefield yourself?
In this episode we tackle these questions and more. (Hint: the answers include “research”)
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:42 — 12.9MB)
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Invent a powerful, NON-technological weapon for your setting.
The Girl with All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey, narrated by Flinty Williams